Current environmental concerns have increased the desirability of industrial applications which utilize biorenewable materials, such as polylactides. Polylactides are biodegradable polymer resins useful in various industries, for example, plastics industries, such as the flooring industry and the packaging industry. Polylactides may be applicable in any industry which utilizes plastics, specifically, injection molded plastics.
However, polylactide is a brittle material which limits its efficacy in some industrial applications. Consequently, conventional processes attempt to improve the toughness of polylactides by blending with another component in order to tune the properties of the final composite. These conventional processes blend the polylactides with rubbery non-renewable polymers (e.g., polyethylene, polyurethane, and acrylic impact modifiers), and have shown significant improvements in the impact strength and elongation at break of the material. Other conventional processes blend polylactides with epoxidized soybean oil, a renewable material; however, the resulting blends did not achieve the properties of the blends containing non-renewable additives. Thus, there is a continual desire to improve the relevant mechanical properties (e.g., tensile toughness, elongation at break, and impact strength) of the polylactide by blending with a renewable component.